


The Song of Forgetting, in C Minor

by whitmans_kiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Community: rs_games, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3358544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitmans_kiss/pseuds/whitmans_kiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first memory comes out easy, two days later, slips from his temple into the jar like a fish being released into a bowl of water. Remus watches the silver strand loop and wrap around itself, settling into a shimmering knot.</p><p>(Written September, 2014.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song of Forgetting, in C Minor

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the RS Games 2014, Team Magic, Prompt [54](http://rs-games.livejournal.com/166831.html).
> 
> As always, this is for [ceredwensirius](http://ceredwensirius.livejournal.com/) and for [toujours_nigel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel), both of whom I adore, and will always remind me what it is to be loved, and a friend.

_“The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us...” - Proust_

 

On the nights where the air in the room is hot and thick, and the harsh, mocking light from the moon outside feels like coals raking across Remus's bristling skin, it seems like nothing can offer relief. There is a seam along his sides, from under his arms down across his hips to his ankles and toes, curling into the bedsheets to ground him, the seam about to burst, needle-sharp fur pushing at the skin just underneath. Naked, he lies trembling, sweat beading at his temples and dampening the pillow half crumpled beneath his cheek, prick flaccid and useless against his thigh.

 

These are the good nights, the nights when he cannot remember the touch of a soft palm gently smoothing down his back, gathering the sweat with a cool flannel, the sloping dip of the mattress from the solid weight of another beside him, deliberate and careful - the nights when even memory eludes him, forced down beneath the pain and resistance to the Change.

 

On the bad nights, when the moon is hidden, shrunken and small next to the stars, Remus gives over to the bone-deep tiredness that holds him together, inertia pushing him forward as one night turns into the next, eating, bathing, _sleeping_ , drifting - he does not remember, exactly.

 

Instead, he dreams, and each dream is a memory, unraveling from spool of silver thread behind his eyes, playing out like a filmstrip from his past.

 

\--------

 

_He exhales, lazy trails of smoke slipping past his lips and down his chin, the sound of rumbled pleasure tugged into the swirling eddies that hang in the air . . ._

_. . . “Moonymine.” The word curls around the shell of his ear, accompanied by a wet tongue, an electric buzz fluttering along his spine . . ._

_. . . shoves the joint in an old, empty teacup, drawing a sleek, hard body against his own . . ._

 

\--------

 

In 1985, Remus lands a consulting gig in an antique shop, using his magical knowledge to uncover any possible Wizarding items that might pass otherwise undetected by the Squib shopkeeper and his Muggle wife.

 

The pay is poor, but it feeds him, and they allow him use of a cot in the hall above the shop, which is comfortable enough, and that winter Remus is given a coat that had once belonged to the shopkeeper's son. They are wise enough and kind enough not to ask about Remus' monthly disappearances -- or perhaps they simply do not care. In either case, Remus is thankful. In either case, it is enough.

 

\--------

 

Mornings are the worst.

 

When he wakes, drags his tired eyes open, the edges of dreams snag and catch around his eyelashes -- although the truth of it is that he knows they are tears, and tears, he knows, breed memories.

 

\--------

 

Remus is at the shop four months before the shopkeeper returns from an auction with a set of canopic jars taken from the tomb of a minor dignitary. _Sixteenth dynasty,_ the shopkeeper says proudly, putting them up for display in the window, expecting inquiries within the week.

 

But there are no inquiries, and two months later when there is a break-in, the jars are counted among the missing items.

 

Remus keeps his hand in his pockets during the investigation, fingers wrapped around four tiny miniatures in clay -- he is not a suspect; he is relieved.

 

\--------

 

_The laughter sounds like a bell, sunny, clear and bright, ringing through the long-emptied Great Hall at half-past nine in the evening . . ._

_. . . “I can't_ believe _it, Remus,” can be heard underneath the laughter, “This will be our best one yet; just wait . . . “_

_. . . a warm, sweaty hand clasping his own, fingers wrapped tightly around his palm, stumbling as they dash up the marble staircase . . ._

 

\--------

 

He leaves the position at the shop after three years, when the winter coat begins to fall apart at the seams, and when he begins to, as well. The canopic jars have remained sealed, hidden away in a secret compartment of his trunk, not having dared to bring them out and risk losing a letter of reference. He had managed long enough; patience would not kill him any more quickly than it already had been.

 

He moves out of the hall and into a dank basement flat, picks up shift work to cover the difference.

 

It takes him nearly a fortnight to find the resolve to take the jars from where they've been kept, remove the miniaturizing charm and restore them to their original size.

 

Remus lines them up on a rotting dresser, draws the curtains apart to let the moonlight in.

 

\--------

 

The first memory comes out easy, two days later, slips from his temple into the jar like a fish being released into a bowl of water. Remus watches the silver strand loop and wrap around itself, settling into a shimmering knot.

 

He replaces the lid, returns the jar to the dresser, looks out the window and squints at the sun.

 

\--------

 

_His body thrums with a low, dull pain, his bones still mending beneath his bruised and healing skin . . ._

_. . . “I've got you,” a low voice says; strong, careful arms gather him up in a wool blanket . . ._

_. . . long fingers brushing hair from Remus' brow, gentle grey eyes so familiar . . ._

 

\--------

 

Over the next three months, fourteen more memories join their brother in the jar. Only most of the mornings are bad.

 

\--------

 

Remus supposes he should feel guilty, as over the next year the first jar fills to the brim with liquid memories, and he undoes the seal on the second. Not even the most evil - perhaps the most evil especially - should be forgotten.

 

The problem wasn't that Sirius had betrayed them, had committed terrible acts, many beyond Remus' will to imagine.

 

The problem was that Sirius had been so very _good_ , had been gentle and slow - had _loved_ so very --

 

\-- Remus stops, finds he cannot quite recall the word.

 

\--------

 

He accepts the position at Hogwarts without hesitation; _finally,_ he thinks, _I am coming home._

 

He sleeps well, if restlessly, for a week, and opens his eyes a little more easily to the sun.

 

\--------

 

Dumbledore visits Remus in his office one afternoon, presumably under the guise of inquiring about Harry, and by the way, did he happen to have seen the Prophet from last week? _Love what you've done with the place,_ Dumbledore adds, pausing in front of a bookshelf.

 

The top shelf holds the four canopic jars, three of them by now long full. Dumbledore looks at them, considering, giving them a long moment of silent attention. Remus does not comment; he sits down, instead, in the silence.

 

 _I find that it's always nice to have a clear head,_ Dumbledore comments on his way out, seemingly apropos of nothing, _but it's best to take care you don't find it empty._

 

Remus puts the jars away in the bottom drawer of his desk, where they cannot be seen by casual guests.

 

\--------

 

The moon is full, and Remus knows it should be a good night -- but his memories are made flesh in a man he hasn't seen but for fading dreams spilling from the corners of his eyes he wipes away every morning -- and so it is a bad night; he expects the worst --

 

When Sirius touches him, embraces him for the first time in twelve long, lonely years -- Remus finds it is no longer familiar.

 

His hands move to curl around Sirius' shoulders, thinner now than before _(before? was there ever a before?)_ , moving on their own, muscle memory not so easily forgotten as the sense-memory now residing in the jars in his desk. His hands know how to touch, but Remus cannot recall his body ever having been.

 

\--------

 

Two years pass.

 

The fourth jar fills.

 

\--------

 

This house is unfamiliar, a relic of another man's childhood -- the one lying next to him, pressed against his back.

 

 _We used to do this,_ Sirius says, voice low, like a prayer, murmuring into the greying curls at the back of Remus' neck, _didn't we?_

 

Sirius asks as though Remus is supposed to know, to _remember,_ to have a ready answer for him that he does not have to scoop from a still-hidden jar.

 

The Dementors take so much, in Azkaban -- happy memories, draining their prisoners of anything so much as resembling a warm thought or experience. They suck the memories out by force, feeding like vultures on carrion, slowly turning men to madness as they scrape the core of light from their souls.

 

(Remus knows, however, that while darkness can blind, so also can the light.)

 

Held tightly held in Sirius' embrace, Remus feigns sleep in lieu of an answer, and for the first time, does not need to dream.


End file.
